


Sugar, We're Going Down

by romankate



Category: Lost Boys (1987)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 10:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/773106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romankate/pseuds/romankate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Star spends a lot of nights walking along the Boardwalk and trying to figure out who to blame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugar, We're Going Down

Before Star opens her eyes she hears them laughing, rough teenage boy laughter echoing through the cavern, dragging her back from dreams of sunlight. David's voice, low and rough against the stone walls, crawls towards her like an unclean thing.

And Laddie's nowhere to be found.

Star knows this instinctively, her mind already having swept the cave for him as soon as she awoke. She leaves the conventional way, ignoring the muffled laughter and comments, the iron stairs up out of the cave groaning under her feet the whole way. Someday, David tells her, those stairs will give way, tearing away from the pitted rock in a shower of rust and bolts, dropping her into the cold black ocean.

Perhaps, Star thinks. But not tonight.

She smells that ocean as she walks barefoot across the cool sand. A long time ago she loved that smell. Now she thinks of it as a slick, greasy coating on her skin, hanging limp in her hair, like she's a mermaid gone wrong, a finned creature thrown clear of the water. With a secret smile, Star stops at the edge of the boardwalk, slipping on her sandals. She likes the idea of being a mermaid, like in that old story. She made it back to the ocean eventually. She got to go home.

Up on the boardwalk, new smells wash over her, masking the ocean. Popcorn warm under the lights, burnt sugar and old metal cooling under the stars. Star scans the crowd automatically, looking for Laddie, but his quick grin is nowhere to be found. So she walks.

She starts at the Smuggler's Arcade and Buccaneer Bay, and saunters unhurriedly along the sandpaper cement, eyes roaming. As she reaches Neptune's Kingdom she thinks she sees him, over near the diving bell, lingering under the greenish fluorescent lights, but it turns out to be some other boy with overlong brown hair, hiding from another version of her; a real version, she thinks, watching the neatly preppy woman find him and crush him to her chest. She watches them hug through the open door for a moment, then turns and starts walking again.

She refuses to turn around and check whether it's Marco or Dwayne riding next to the caveman on the skyway, keeping tabs on her, so instead she stops and closes her eyes for a moment. Marco's thoughts hang in the night sky with a shy hum. He feels her touch too, and the darting blush of shame it wakes tells her how much he doesn't want to be here doing David's dirty work.

Unperturbed, Star starts walking again.

By the time she's reached the log flume, she's started to worry. Down here at the end of the boardwalk the crowds have thinned out, all the children gone home for the night. All except her. And Laddie.

"Hey! Hey you!" Drunken giggles and shushing from the direction of the beach. "Yeah you, cutie. Come over here!"

She would, but the resulting nightmares it would cause would take a lifetime to forget, and no matter how obnoxious the fratboy, Star can’t get past them being someone else’s Laddie; so many shades of her, pacing and waiting on their return.

"Star!"

Whirling, she manages to stay on her feet when Laddie bowls into her, grasping, wanting to be picked up. She doesn’t oblige him, without, as always, knowing why.

“There you are.” David does it for her, swinging Laddie easily up on his hip, and Star curses herself for being blind to his approach, too pleased at having dirtied Marco with her disdain, too consumed with worry for Laddie.

“I thought you two might’ve forgotten about me. About us.” David shifts Laddie higher on his hip.

“You? Never!” Laddie replies, arms around David’s neck, legs wrapped round his waist.

Star pulls the shawl around her tightly, the fringe whipping against her calf as she walks. The shawl does nothing against the fierce cold come in off the ocean, or the cold beneath her breastbone, but it reminds her how every beautiful thing must fade, becoming worn and strange with time. Hunching her shoulders as the wind springs up, she hides behind her hair and heads for the trestle bridge. At least it'll be warm, and the noise and lights are a brief respite from long cold nights in the cave beneath the cliff. And Laddie’s found, after all.

Feeling David pause she turns, just in time to see him set Laddie down, letting him run straight into Dwayne’s arms. He picks up Laddie and spins him in a circle in front of the log flume, Marco standing awkwardly by. Idly, Star wonders when the last time Laddie actually walked any place on his own two feet, all of them too eager to carry him by far.

The wind picks up and she tugs the shawl around her tighter and turns, heading for the cliffs.

It must be so strange, she thinks, to live right next to the Boardwalk. Every open window carrying in the sounds of a joy that wasn’t yours, a joy only found in this strange, created space where once there’d only been water and sand. Walking, she tries to picture the beach before the Boardwalk and fails; without the mad rush of escape, the burnt sugar lights, Santa Carla would be just another sleepy little town on the coast.

The boardwalk ends, and Star keeps walking, David beside her. They head out onto the train trestle. The after-midnight wind is colder now, coming straight in off the ocean and prying at her ridiculous lace dress and shawl.

David takes off his coat and wraps it round her shoulders. They walk. "This is a date, right?" he asks.

She laughs, soundless and bitter. “Is that what this is, David?”

“Apparently not.” They keep walking and the sand beneath the railroad ties passes in dizzying flashes, so far below.

“Tell me something David,” Star says. “Tell me. Why do you keep doing this?”

“This.”

“This. This whole--” She spins and throws her arm wide, encompassing the whole whirl of the Boardwalk. “Why? Why do we have to keep doing it, night after night, summer after summer? And the winters...” Her voice breaks, so she stills it.

David keeps walking. He doesn’t answer and he doesn’t look back.

“Why?” She yells. “Why keep us here? What’s the point?”

David stops in the middle of the railroad tracks and turns to face her. "Star, Star, Star. This game is getting old. You running, me following. I know you find it hard to believe, but there are worse things in the night than both of us."

“Like what, David? What is so bad that you have to keep us here with you? That you took me-- that you took Laddie. He was just a little boy, David!”

He pauses before answering and she sees the shadows in his eyes, the shades of who he might’ve been...before. “Is that what this is about, Star? You think I built myself my own little family, is that what this is? You think I’m trying to hold us together so I won’t feel alone anymore, that I’m keeping you all here like fine china in a cabinet?”

Star doesn’t answer. She’d known what was coming next and hated them both for it: him for knowing exactly what she hadn’t said, and her for thinking it in the first place.

David leans in closer, so close Star expects his lips to brush her cheek. But they don’t.

“Leave,” he whispers.

She stands perfectly still, eyes brimming with tears.

“Go on, go. Take whatever you like, whatever you think might be useful, whatever you need in your new... life. Take Laddie.”

She’s biting her lip hard enough to break the skin.

“You’re welcome to leave whenever you’d like, Star. Make the best of it on your own. You and your little boy, out there in the world. Let me know how it works out.”

“Stop it!” She turns away sharply and stumbles in the darkness. David catches her arm and stops her fall.

For a long while, neither of them say anything. The waves shush up onto the sand, edging closer to the group around the bonfire she passed earlier. Even from up here the edges of their laughter reach her, the badly played guitar, the clink of bottles being sent around.

“Star,” David says finally, with a note of sadness in his voice, “I’m not the one keeping you here.”

***

They walk back toward the Boardwalk in silence, and the wind is harsh and biting. David doesn’t offer Star his jacket, so she pulls the silk shawl around her as best she’s able and holds her head high, gritting her teeth so they don’t chatter.

They stand captivated outside Smuggler's Arcade, captivated by the saltwater taffy machine. It spins and stretches the sugar, strands folded in upon strands, fold after fold, the machine tireless and timeless. David nudges her and she turns, startled, then remembers. They have to get moving before someone notices. Before someone else stares at the unending folds of taffy and realizes there are no reflections in the window.


End file.
